FEJD

Non-Metal / Folk Metal • Sweden

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Fejd formed in 2001 through a fusion of the folk music duo Rimmerfors and a couple of members from the metal band Pathos. Rimmerfors played folk music with medieval undertones, performing on contemporary instruments, and together with their childhood friends of Pathos, they transformed into a refined band with the best of both worlds - the feeling of metal in symbiosis with the sound, the melodic language and sadness of the nordic folk music.

The brothers interest in swedish medieval folk music started back in 1995, commenced by music studying and the feeling of wanting to explore new musical ground and try something new. The brothers musical background, as well as their band mates, has its roots in heavy metal music. Inspiration is also drawn from like-minded bands such as Garmarna and Hedningarna.

In addition to Fejd, the brothers Rimmerfors still performs every now and then as an acoustic duo.

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FEJD Reviews

Having now been around for fifteen years as a folk artist, Swedish group Fejd have finally done what has always seemed to be an inevitability: they've become a metal band. Having formed with members with a metal background there has always seemed to be an underlying metal feeling to Fejd's music even though previously they weren't employing guitars at all except as a very rare additional instrument on a couple of their releases. It's something that has always made them a part of the metal scene even more than their shared membership with acts such as Pathos and Nostradameus, with some even going as far as calling their previous work folk metal. That isn't really true, but they were always the closest you were ever going to get to a folk metal band without said band actually being metal.

Except now they really are metal. Trolldom (2016) is Fejd's fourth full-length album. It sees the band add to their line-up guitarist Per-Owe Solvelius, whose metal credits include acts such as Trident and Igneous Human. His presence really highlights for me how influenced by metal Fejd really were on previous releases, as his guitar slides into Fejd's existing sound seamlessly as if it was always there. What Fejd are doing on Trolldom otherwise hasn't really changed despite the genre shift from folk music to folk metal. This is still very much recognisable as a Fejd album. For any other folk act adding actual metal into the equation would probably be a much bigger deal but Fejd make it seem like the most natural thing in the world.

Lead single and opener Härjaren kicks things off as one might expect a Fejd album to start, but then the guitar roars into life and asserts that Fejd have changed. Its definitely one of my favourite tracks from Trolldom and proved really addictive for me in the wait for the rest of the album to arrive. While there are still some softer sections to be found, as is the case with most folk metal releases, Fejd have absolutely gone full metal with Trolldom, with riffs featuring prominently in all eight tracks. The riffs show a decent level of variety with touches of a number of metal genre creeping in, notable power metal on the track Svart. Another notable track is Bed för din själ, which is actually an older Fejd song, all the way back from the demo Huldran (2004), that has been updated. This version features guest vocals from Linn Katrin Øygard of Norwegian folk rock/metal act Bergtatt.

I can't say that every track here is as immediately satisfying the way Härjaren is, but subsequent listens have shown Trolldom to be a real grower. I'm not sold on whether making the jump into metal was the right move for Fejd as yet, only time and more releases will tell for that (I am presuming that since Per-Owe Solvelius was added to the line-up full time that this sound change is here to stay and that Trolldom isn't a one-off, like an inverse of the way folk metal acts do non-metal albums), but I do think that Trolldom at least is an excellent folk metal album that draws on folk influences that are a used a little less often in a metal context (especially compared to Celtic folk). It's certainly the kind of album I've been interested to hear Fejd try their hands at ever since I first discovered them through their debut album Storm (2009). I prefer it a little to their previous offering Nagelfar (2013), but at this point my personal favourite Fejd album has to remain the masterful Eifur (2010).

Sweden’s Fejd are a bit of an enigma within the metal scene, in that the group doesn’t actually play metal, but Nordic folk music. Yet since their even their early demo releases Fejd seems to be an accepted part of the metal scene. They boost connections to a few metal bands such as Pathos and Nostradameus, but they themselves as a band don’t even feature a full time guitarist, instead favouring traditional instruments, mostly played by frontman Patrik Rimmerfors, including bouzouki, Swedish bagpipe and hurdy-gurdie. How then do Fejd quite often get labelled as a folk metal act? It’s a term that other listeners in my experience have quite vehemently tried to disassociate the band from. Personally I think both arguments have their points. 2013’s Nagelfar is the third full-length album from Fejd, and it looks set to refuel the debate once again as Fejd show some evolution from the sound heard on Storm (2009) and Eifur (2010).

While at first Nagelfar may come across as band of the same from Fejd, it becomes apparent, especially in the later stages of the album, that Fejd have given those claiming the act to belong to folk metal a bit more ground to stand on, as Nagelfar does actually feature some uses of a heavy distorted guitar now. It’s a rarity, but it is there, where it had, to my knowledge, only ever been used in one prior Fejd song from their Eld (2006) EP. Fejd though have always had quite the aggressive take on how they produced their folk music and while it may have been simpler to label them as folk rock at most, I at least have always been able to hear a metal-like approach to their technique, if not their actual sound. It’s never been there all the time, Fejd have long proved themselves capable of switching between gentle and aggressive music on their albums, but I for one have felt that the band has always had some underlying metal influences even though I couldn’t honestly call them a folk metal band. Metal elements are much more obvious on Nagelfar, so maybe this will be the album where people finally get what it is Fejd do.

I think that Fejd already produced a couple of high grade albums in Storm and Eifur but Nagelfar is easily the album that they needed to make at this stage of their career. It extends their sound with new ideas without sacrificing anything that made their sound special. The result is a more varied album containing songs that sound like typical Fejd standards such as Sigurd Ring, the darkly menacing title track and the metal fuelled Vindarnas Famn. Patrik Rimmerfors’s vocals are perfect as always, and even though I don’t understand a word of the Swedish sung lyrics, most the songs get stuck in my head, especially Den Skimrande (a favourite after the title track) and Sigurd Ring.

Overall I wouldn’t say that Nagelfar is quite as strong an album as the prior Eifur, but it’s certainly a satisfying follow-up and a slightly stronger release than debut effort Storm. All Fejd’s releases have sat comfortably on my ‘exceptional album’ rating tier though and Nagelfar is no exception to this run of high quality work from the Swedish folk act. After near enough three years away, it is good to have Fejd back putting out new music.

In many ways it is both unusual and perfectly normal to include a band such as Sweden’s Fejd in a metal/rock website. Fejd technically does not play metal or rock music, although its musicians come from a metal background. However there is a strange sort of metal atmosphere about the band’s music. Stylistically this is folk, and very authentic sounding folk at that with the band singing in their native language and using instruments such as Bouzouki, Swedish Bagpipe, Jew's Harp, Hurdy-Gurdy, Cow Antler, Recorder, Willow-pipe and Keyed Fiddle to boot and not an electric guitar to be heard. The folk instruments are backed however by a more common setup seen in metal bands, bass, keyboards and drums. On paper this isn’t metal and even when you listen to it you know it’s not metal and yet somehow it has the passion and the feel of metal in it, to the point that the band often gets tagged as being folk metal and included in metal listings on websites, despite that fact that technically they have no metal element. Even I, someone who likes to be very accurate with what tags I use with my music, often feel inclined to call Fejd a folk metal band. So what’s it all about I hear you ask? Well let me do my best to tell you as I review the group’s 2010 release Eifur, their second album and their best release to date.

Eifur opens up with the excellent Drängen Och Kråkan, starting off it sounds very folk then you get a few stabs that could just easily have been some power cords in a metal band. Early hints at their metal influences there. The drumming is also more prominent in the mix of these songs that I’ve heard in other folk music, as I said earlier the rhythm section of Fejd is pretty metal a standard setup for a metal band. Couple with the way the folk instruments are played it doesn’t that make much to imagine songs such as Drängen Och Kråkan being translated and working as full blown metal songs. There can be aggression in Fejd’s music, not so much in this opening track but its there and when it comes to the fore you can really hear what is meant when people say Fejd is metal. Farsot for example starts with some solo bass with is joined by a Jew’s Harp and when the song gets going it really does have the same effect with folk instruments as metal ones would. Sometimes when one thinks about it too much it’s as bizarre as it is pretty awesome. To further clarify the point there are even sections in the music that almost feel designed for headbanging, such as the part in Yggdrasil where after the second chorus (about two and half minutes in) things hit a real groove that I for one find myself nodding my head to as if I was listening to a metal band.

Enough about what genre they may or may not be. Let’s talk about Eifur as an album. In short this is a really impression record with highlights in abundance. First few songs Drängen Och Kråkan, Farsot, and Jungfru I Hindhamn really set the pace of the record and are all top notch tracks, especially the latter. After these three is the short instrumental Alvas Halling, which is great in its own right, I especially like the atmosphere of the piece. These are all new songs for the album, there are a few which I’ll discuss later that are remarks from the band’s demo releases I En Tid Som Var... and Huldran. I’ll finish this section by talking about the new songs though. The remake of Arv is thrown in between them and then we get three more new tracks, the title track Eifur, Ledung and lead single Gryning. Eifur is the one of the album’s shorter vocal pieces and the vocals of frontman Patrik Rimmerfors are particularly good here, though he keeps up a very high standard throughout the album. Ledung fits it well with the album but is perhaps one of the few moments on Eifur where I don’t dig it so much. Gryning however is another great track and one of my favourites from the album. The album then gives time to some more redone tracks before finishing up with Trollfärd, another instrumental, which provides an excellent piece to lead us out of this excellent Nordic journey.

Now to talk about these redone songs. Before Eifur was released I was of two minds about their decision to do this. I consider the band’s demos to very good releases as they are the band allows people to download these demos for free from their website so in a way we’re not getting anything new here and I was worried that they didn’t have enough material to make an album, which in turn worried me than the new songs wouldn’t be as of high quality as the demos or their first album Storm. As I’ve said the new songs are very good so obviously that was not the case. On a positive note for these songs inclusion as I said the demos were very good and I for one as a fan of this band feel very happy to have versions of them on an actual CD now, however if they were going to do this it would have been nice to see some personal favourites from the demos, namely their title tracks I En Tid Som Var... and Huldran respectively appearing on Eifur. However the ones we get are Arv and Yggdrasil from I En Tid Som Var... and Varstäv and Äring from Huldran. Varstäv is pretty much just the intro to Äring, which makes me wish that Fejd had made the two songs into one track this time around, seeing as Äring has been altered to include a reprise of Varstäv at the end. Äring however is an excellent song, as is Yggdrasil, which features the lead vocals of Niklas Rimmerfors instead of Patrik’s. This was always one of my favourites from their demos and naturally becomes a highlight for Eifur as well. As for Arv, the first of the remakes that we get to hear, well Arv was never a true favourite of mine from the demos. It’s a good song and all but like Ledung from the new tracks, I just don’t dig it so much.

In summary I find Eifur to be a fantastic release. It has a couple of moments where the pace seems to take a bit of a dip but other than that it’s of a masterwork quality and I would recommend it to metal fans without a shadow of a doubt. This both is and isn’t metal, and you got to hear it to believe it and you know what? Even if you don’t get it you may still just enjoy Eifur, but I know that I, for one, would be mighty stumped if I ever saw a metal site not at least acknowledge Fejd as one of our own.